I have used the trial for photoshop and found it amazing but to actualy buy a copy myself is just way to expensive, I just want to do images for low popularity sites so I could never justify paying over $500

Anyway what I was wondering is if anyone can suggest any free or atleast cheap Photoshop like programs?

Well to be honest in my opinion I have to say that you get what you pay for in life and nothing is free so maybe you should consider making money with your websites or something to cover the costs of a good image editing program.

Here is a free image editor, it is called GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

For a free bit of software I think it is really good that GIMP program, I would reccomend it to anyone who don't like spending money.

Well here is also a nice image editing program

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

I have always like Serif software.

Why don't you think about how much your site is worth to you and then choose what sort of budget you want to have so you can buy something rather than totaly free.

Not the best but yet another option

http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/

I am actualy a little suprised just how many free image makers there are.

Another possible option if you don't wanna buy expensive software is to pay someone to make the images for you that is using proffesional tools.

This has gotta be the best one ever, wait for it . . . ULTIMATE PAINT

http://www.ultimatepaint.com/

I am sure it is the best thing since sliced bread